It’s a classic question: How much personal liberty ought to be sacrificed in the interest of collective security?
Jim Moran answered that question yesterday with his own characteristic elegance and tact:
“I could care less whether somebody feels me up or somebody sees what I look like without my clothes. You know, so what? I think it’s something you just have to live with.”
That’s a little different from what Benjamin Franklin opined on this subject: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” (quoted in Memoirs of the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin, 1818)
Moran’s comments were made in reply to a question from News Channel 8’s Bruce DePuyt about TSA’s controversial new screening procedures that require a “virtual strip search” or an intrusive pat down when going through airport security. Moran’s tone was dismissive as he told us that he doesn’t “have much sympathy for the privacy advocates on that” and that we should all “just go with the flow. That’s life in the 21st century.”
Embedded in Moran’s dismissal of those who raise liberty concerns about the new TSA procedures is a fundamental assumption: that the TSA procedures actually do make us all more secure. And that’s an assumption worth questioning. Any time we are asked to trade liberty for security, we want actual security not just an illusion of it and we want it in the least intrusive way possible. I’m suspicious that TSA is giving us a fool’s bargain and Moran is buying it.
